The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) is an autocephalous church with parishes mainly in the United States and Canada (though it had a few parishes in Australia and elsewhere). The OCA was formerly known as the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America, or more informally, the Metropolia. Previous to that, it was the North American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. The OCA's autocephaly is not currently recognized by most of the other autocephalous Orthodox churches.

History

The OCA began with the missionary work of the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands by eight Orthodox monks who arrived in Alaska in 1794. They were part of the centuries-old missionary heritage of the Russian Orthodox Church that brought the Orthodox Church, by the monks Hourg and Barsanuphii, to the Mongol peoples. And monk St Stephen of Perm (1340-96) who would in turn journey beyond Kazan, across the Ural mountain, into the forests of Siberia to bring Orthodoxy to the pagan Zyrians. And the Russian monks who brought the Church even more eastward, eventually establishing a network of missions across Siberia and along the entire Pacific Rim: in China (1686), Alaska (1794), Japan (1861), and Korea (1898).

While the Church in Alaska was growing, immigrants were arriving in the rest of North America. In the 1860s a parish was established in San Francisco by Serbians, Russians and Greeks. Parishes were also established across the territory of the United States. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the headquarters of the North American Diocese was moved to San Francisco and then to New York. At this time there were great waves of Orthodox immigrants from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, and the Middle East. A belief commonly held within OCA circles (and among some in other jurisdictions) is that they were all united in a single diocese or jurisdiction, which was under the Russian Orthodox Church. (This view is disputed by a number of non-OCA church historians.) Although the Russians certainly were united, as were some parishes from other ethnic groups (especially those of Middle Eastern heritage), there were many others (most notably the overwhelming majority of the Greeks) who did not look to the Russian Orthodox Archdiocese of the Aleutian Islands and North America. Instead, they looked to their mother churches. In an attempt to address this problem, Archbishop Tikhon, later Tikhon of Moscow, had advocated (in a 1905 report to the Holy Synod) for an American Orthodox Church with "greater autonomy," governed by a synod of bishops representing the various nationalities. Tikhon's proposal did not have the opportunity to succeed.

In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution brought communication between the churches in North America and Russia to an almost complete halt. In the early 1920s, Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow directed all Russian Orthodox churches outside of Russia to govern themselves autonomously until regular communication could be resumed. (He died in 1925, and was glorified as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1989.) Shortly thereafter, at a Council of all hierarchs and clergy and parish delegates, it was decided that the Church in North America could no longer maintain strict administrative ties with the Church in Russia, especially since Patriarch Tikhon had been arrested. Additionally, the loss of financial support from the fallen empire added to the diocese's problems.

At that time, some parishes which had been part of a single, multi-ethnic, North American diocese organized separate dioceses and placed themselves under various other mother churches, solidifying the current situation of multiple, ethnically-based, overlapping, jurisdictions in North America. Though the revolution in Russia helped to speed this fragmentation process along, it had already been occurring prior to 1917, as hundreds of Orthodox parishes in the US had been founded without any reference to the Russian presence, whose authority was not universally acknowledged.

Since November of 2005, when a list of accusations were brought forward by Protodeacon Eric Wheeler, the former treasurer of the OCA, its administration has been the subject of allegations of financial misconduct. Internal investigations, audits, and other actions have since then been enacted in an attempt to address the allegations, including the firing and deposition of the OCA chancellor, the former Protopresbyter Robert S. Kondratick. The OCA News website, a privately operated site with no connection to the administration, has been publishing reports and editorials on the scandal since January of 2006, including allegations of division within the OCA's holy synod. In August 2007, the Diocese of the Midwest, which contributes to the OCA more funds than any other OCA diocese, began withholding its assessments to the central administration.[1]

In September of 2008, after the release of a scathing report by an official investigative committee, the former primate, Metr. Theodosius (Lazor), was disciplined[2] and the then current primate, Metr. Herman (Swaiko) was retired by the Holy Synod.[3]

The OCA today

The OCA today consists of 14 dioceses on the territory of Canada, the United States, and Mexico with 623 parishes, missions, and institutions (456 of which are parishes). Of the dioceses 3 are non-territorially organized along ethnic lines. These ethnic dioceses include communities in both the United States and Canada.

There are three ethnically defined dioceses in the OCA: The Albanian Orthodox Archdiocese of Boston (13 parishes[4]), the Bulgarian Orthodox Diocese of Toledo (21 communities[5]), and the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate in America (100 communities[6]). These dioceses' geographic territory overlaps with the other dioceses of the OCA and they have under their care parishes with those ethnic associations, although all are home to multiethnic parishes and the Bulgarian Orthodox Diocese also includes Romanian-language communities. These dioceses are the result of smaller ethnic jurisdictions joining the OCA at some point in its history, usually after having broken from other bodies due to the politics of the Cold War era.

Growth and membership figures

Altogether, estimates of OCA faithful number from about 28,000[8] to 1 million[9] to 2 million[10], depending on the report cited and method used for counting. The number of new parishes founded from 1990 to 2000 increased the overall parish number by about 12%, and new membership has been fairly equally divided between new immigrants, children of existing members, and converts to the faith. Overall, according to one report the trend during that decade held the population of OCA faithful in neither increase nor decline, but remaining steady.[11] According to another, however, that same decade saw a 13% decline.[12]

According to Fr. Jonathan Ivanoff, who is on the administrative committee of the OCA's Department of Evangelization and the board of directors of the Orthodox Christian Mission Center, the OCA's American contintental membership (i.e., not including Alaska, Canada, or the ethnic dioceses) "has been declining between 6 and 9% for nearly 20 years. The OCA's Census population in 1994 was 29,775; in 2004 it stood at 27,169."[13] Despite these sobering figures, however, the OCA's dioceses of the West and South, as well as many parishes in other dioceses, have reported steady growth.

A 2010 United States Census of Religious Bodies, of which Alexei Krindatch, a statistician who has done extensive work on Orthodox churches and congregations, is part, estimated that in the United States there are approximately 85,000 people who consider themselves adherents to the OCA, of which about 40% (approximately 34,000) are actually regular church attendees. [14] (See also Demographics)

Name

According to the 1970 Tomos of Autocephaly granted by the Church of Russia, the name of this church body was originally The Autocephalous Orthodox Church in America.[15] According to the Statute of the Orthodox Church in America, adopted by the Second All-American Council in October 1971, the usage is The Orthodox Church in America at the beginning of sentences[16] and the Orthodox Church in America in the middle of sentences[17], thus seeming to imply that the capitalization of the in the name is not vital.

Metropolitan Leonty (Turkevich)Archbishop of New York, Metropolitan of All America and Canada (1950-65)

Metropolitan Ireney (Bekish)Archbishop of New York, Metropolitan of All America and Canada (1965-77) assisted by Archbishop Sylvester (Haruns)Archbishop of Montreal and Canada, Temporary Administrator of the Orthodox Church in America (1974-77)